Speaker 1: 0:00

The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters the last word in podcasting news. This is the award-winning Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Sethi.

Sam Sethi: 0:12

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans.

Alex Sanfillipo: 0:17

Our goal is to break a million dollars back in the hands of podcasters and at time of recording, we're just over $900,000 we've given back.

James Cridland: 0:23

Alex Sanfilippo on Podmatch plus data about Spotify and YouTube, and Captivate announce a set of new features. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout, with the tools, support and community to ensure you keep podcasting, Start podcasting, keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom.

Speaker 1: 0:41

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 0:46

This week's first kickoff story is about Spotify. It's about word of mouth. Now, one of the things that we always say with podcasting is how do you get discovery of a podcast? You know, is it through SEO? Is it through word of mouth? Is it through other mechanisms? Spotify have launched a direct messaging feature. James, Tell me more about it.

James Cridland: 1:09

Yeah, so you'll be able to send messages to each other, including music, podcast and audiobook recommendations, without leaving the app. So brilliant, spotify turns into another messaging app that you've got to check Messages is rolling out in quotes selected markets, according to Spotify's press release. Who knows what selected markets means there, but it'll be available for people who are aged over the age of 16, which is, you know, which is certainly a helpful thing. But, yeah, that's going to be interesting. Spotify very much promoting the social side of its app and that will, you know, obviously be of interest to those people who like the social side of these things.

Sam Sethi: 1:54

Look, they've had a social element they used to have and they still have the ability to integrate with Facebook. In the day, that was the thing that they did, if you remember. I mean, spotify came out of being a Facebook app originally, yeah, and then they had oh, your friend is playing this Connect to your social graph on Facebook and that worked really well. Nobody really plays with it now, but it still exists there within the UI. And the one thing I thought was interesting these are DM messages, not comments. I think one of the things with comments is the problem that most social websites have is how do you police those comments right? So if somebody sends you something in the DM, it's less intrusive than when it's a public comment, I think I think that's probably why they're doing it.

James Cridland: 2:44

Yeah, I think so, although I mean it's a public comment, I think I think that's probably why they're doing it. Yeah, I think so, although I mean it's interesting. Youtube music, of course, has comments for everything. So if you go into, if you go into songs, for example, then you can actually see what songs, you know what, what comments people have left for each and every song, which is, you know, always an interesting thing.

James Cridland: 3:01

Never quite know quite what you're going to see there. Normally it's first of people finding these comments and leaving stuff. Oh, brilliant, that's what you need. Just wondering if you can actually leave comments for podcasts, but I'm assuming that you can do, I'm assuming that that's the usual, you know the usual way that these things work. Let's have a quick peek, because I've moved back to youtube music this week, so it's always nice to you know see what is there. Is there, are there any comments? Well, I can't see any comments on the web version quite yet, so perhaps there aren't any comments there, but there certainly were comments for songs, I noticed. So, yeah, so who knows?

Sam Sethi: 3:46

daniel eck was very excited about this feature because he says he likes sharing. It takes him back to the days when he did cassette mixes. Yeah, so you know the whole idea of sharing music. I think it is more of a music thing. We'll see how many people share podcasts and audiobooks, but yeah, it is more of a music thing. Now, moving on, spotify released data on Gen Z's use of podcasts on the platform. What did they have to say?

James Cridland: 4:10

They did. Yeah, so they released quite a lot, because of course, it's back to school for quite a lot of the planets, not here in Australia, but back to school in the Northern Hemisphere, which for some reason starts in September who knows why we start in January. That makes much more sense to me. Anyway, what you see for young school age people is you see podcasts going up significantly at breakfast time, so up by, you know, about 20%. The same goes for music as well, as people you know get into the routine of being, you know, going to school and all of that.

James Cridland: 4:47

There was quite an interesting bit of data, which is around the type of podcasts that people are having a listen to, and I think there was a significant increase in the amount of podcasts that people were listening to in things like science and business and technology. So you know, clearly that sort of you know podcasts are being used for education. Good Lord, heaven help us. So that's a thing, but yeah, so you know just a bunch of information, of course, spotify telling us that Gen Z students are both streaming podcasts but also streaming audiobooks for school and for fun, because of course they are, aren't they?

James Cridland: 5:28

But yeah, the one thing that I thought was a little bit weird in this was in the small print, sam, where the whole point about this entire press release is to talk about how brands can connect with listeners through Spotify advertising. That was the whole point of doing this, so that you can actually reach people of school age and be able to advertise to them. But then it says where the data comes from, and the data came from student premium users on Spotify, which, of course, are the very people that don't hear the ads. So the actual data is coming from the people who don't hear the ads, but would you like to advertise to these people anyway?

Sam Sethi: 6:07

Very confusing in the next few months, and one of the features that did stand out to me and given your radio background as well was their integration with the DAX marketplace for podcasters, and I think that was the one that I found most interesting.

James Cridland: 6:33

Yeah, I mean they're announcing a number of different things selling your own feed drops so much the same as Libsyn's pod role. You'll be able to. You'll be able to, you know, use that to earn yourself some money. If you would like to, for example, sell a feed drop of a different show in your feed, then you now can if you want to. And then they've, as you say, integrated with DAX is Global's advertising platform. Dax has lots of advertising in there, and now you'll be able to earn money through your podcasts.

James Cridland: 7:11

What I thought was interesting is actually, if you read the fine print, it's going to be a little bit different. If you're a small podcaster and you're not really earning an awful lot of money and you're not really getting an awful lot of people, then you will have different access to the advertising than if you are a larger podcast. It will sort of automatically scale you over to more of the more bespoke advertising. So they seem to have thought quite carefully about how they were going to offer it. But that I thought was interesting. So that's coming in December.

James Cridland: 7:46

I actually thought that the most interesting thing and the one that I was there thinking this is the obvious thing the beta opens the 4th of October. It's Captivate Studio, where they are essentially replacing Riverside or Clean Feed or any of those tools and instead allowing you to record and edit in Captivate itself. So no going off to a third party. Probably some of that was because, you know, obviously Riverside has been selling itself as a podcast host, even if Stephen wasn't going to talk about it last week, so I thought that that was really interesting, that actually this is the. I think this is the second podcast host. Libsyn tried it and then stopped it relatively quickly, but I think that this is the second podcast host that's actually built in remote recording into their tool set and that makes a whole bunch of sense from my point of view. I thought.

Sam Sethi: 8:43

I think there's two parts or two questions I have in my mind. I wonder what the pricing will be, because that's going to be interesting, and secondly, have they built this from scratch? Was this a third-party licensed deal that they've taken on?

James Cridland: 8:56

I believe that I mean, there are a couple of open source tools out there Jitsi is one of them and so they could be using that open source tools out there. Jitsi is one of them, and so they could be using that open source thing. But I would guess, knowing the team at Captivate relatively well, because I was an advisor to them until they were bought by Global, I would guess that they will be probably have built most of this for themselves. It's actually, whisper it, not too difficult now to build a remote recording tool.

Sam Sethi: 9:25

The difficulty is actually Hang on, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. How much money has Riverside raised? Oh, I know, don't say it's easy to do.

James Cridland: 9:35

No, it is much easier to do now with all of the audio tools that are built into a typical browser, much, much easier than it was three, four years ago. Riverside, of course, have earned themselves a load of money because Riverside is far more than just a recorder and an editing tool. It does a bunch of other things in there as well, but the remote recording stuff by itself isn't particularly complicated. The complicated bit is actually making sure that it works really well, and that's you know, and that's one of the issues there. What I don't necessarily see here is video. So it says that Captivate Studio will allow you to record up to seven participants with incredible quality and stability before you can quickly and seamlessly turn that file into a complete podcast episode. No mention of the word video there. So my suspicion is it's all going to be audio and it's all just going to make life easier and simpler for audio editors, but if you want to use video, then you'll carry on using a third party tool.

Sam Sethi: 10:37

I think, with the guest booking system that they have. I think this could be quite interesting because, again, in a podcaster's workflow, you know, I, I find my guest. I then, you know, send him a link. Now that link's probably going to go to captivate the studio, click bang done. I wonder what the editing capability will be, you know, umming in, erring in and descript elements yeah, yeah, yeah that'll be interesting to see what they do there, or is it a?

Sam Sethi: 11:03

download audio into another app. You know we'll see. Yeah, Maybe Mr Usquith needs to come on the show soon.

James Cridland: 11:10

Maybe at some point we should get Mark to talk broad Yorkshire at us Broad Yorkshire and we'll see if we can understand any of it.

Sam Sethi: 11:20

Moving on, james and YouTube users listen Maybe they've just seen your sticker, you know. Listen to that. They watch more than half of their podcasts.

James Cridland: 11:51

But that essentially means that pretty well 50% listen to more than half of their podcasts. And then you have a look at Spotify and there's a large chunk of Spotify as well Spotify's users who are watching podcasts. Now, almost a third of people there say that they watch podcasts on the platform more than listen. I guess you know Tom's point here was if your show doesn't work in audio only then you're making a mistake. So, if I can quote from my sticker, something for your ears when your eyes are busy, that's kind of important. So yeah, so I think I think that it was interesting seeing the actual data there and very much seeing that, yes, youtube has podcasts, but that doesn't necessarily mean that people are just sitting there watching them. They're probably enjoying podcasts while they do other things as well. So, yeah, so there's a webinar coming up in a couple of weeks time, I believe and you can learn more about that.

Sam Sethi: 12:48

Now just quickly. Has anything changed on Pod News Daily?

James Cridland: 12:53

Well, for the last week quietly, because I have a fancy roadcaster now, which is why I may be sounding slightly different in your ears I have been now able to mix Pod News Daily live, because I've got all of the buttons all charged up so I can actually mix the whole thing live, which is quite nice, and that then means that I can produce the whole thing in video form. So actually for the last three or four days I've been uploading the video to Spotify, to YouTube and, of course, in the alternate enclosure in the main RSS feed. John Spurlock has already been pushing me into producing an HLS version as well, and apparently it's not that difficult. Just need some magic FFmpeg understanding to be able to work out how to do it. So I will probably get on the case on that when I have a spare moment. But yeah, so if you want to watch me reading a script in an office sometimes it's light, sometimes it's dark outside, who knows how that works Then you know, go to a supporting app and have a watch, yeah.

Sam Sethi: 13:59

Yeah, because you're one of the only podcasts that we use on TrueFans to test against, where, in fact, pod News Daily is such a great podcast to test most things against, but it's one of those. You've got Opus, you've got AAC, you've got MP3, you've got video right. So this HLS will be really interesting, because what you'll then end up doing, potentially, is removing those other formats from the alternative enclosure and putting HLS 320, 720, let's say, and then, in effect, automatically, based on the bandwidth of the user or listener's device, it should serve the correct version.

James Cridland: 14:42

Well, maybe and I mean maybe that's how it'll work or maybe I'll keep the big chunky video file it's actually a 720p video file, but maybe I'll keep that as well so that I've got a downloadable video file in there as well, and then we'll. That'll throw the cat amongst the pigeons, but yeah, I mean, you know, it's one of the reasons why I self-host the daily podcast is exactly to do this sort of thing and to play around with stuff. See if I understand it enough to write about it. You know to be learnt from doing all of this. And if I can work out the easy way of here's a file now, make a set of decent HLS streams out of it, then great. You know, I'll go and learn how to do that and see how easy stroke complicated that is to end up doing.

Sam Sethi: 15:38

Good, let us know. We'll be happy to test with you. Now. Apple and TuneIn. Now this is a really weird one. I thought TuneIn died. Basically I thought it had just given up the ghost because many years ago, when we were trying to get podcasts on to tune in from river radio, they weren't accepting any and I thought that whole podcast group had closed and I thought tune in was on its last legs. But it seems that Apple wants to make TuneIn a partner for Apple Music. Tell me more, James.

James Cridland: 16:08

Yeah, this is really interesting. So Apple has a bunch of radio stations. I think it's got eight radio stations Never heard one.

Sam Sethi: 16:16

Yeah.

James Cridland: 16:16

Yeah, they're not bad, and I think you know the thing. So I've been playing around with Apple Music for the last month and a half. No-transcript them free through the Apple Music app, but you have to work out how to do that. But certainly that's been the only place that you can have a listen to them until now, because right now, the Apple radio stations are now available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the TuneIn app, which is now taking them. Now, that's interesting.

James Cridland: 17:17

Tunein actually still powers an awful lot of radio. It powers radio that you listen to on smart speakers both Google, amazon and Apple. It powers the radio that you listen to in Apple Music, so you can ask Apple Music, listen to BBC Radio 1, and you'll find a stream in there. But now, all of a sudden, apple is now putting their radio stations into the TuneIn platform as well, so that if you have the TuneIn app, you can listen to Apple Music One, or you can listen to the, to the chill radio station they've got, or you can listen to, you know, all of the other weird and wonderful stations, and so that that's. That's quite an interesting thing. I thought yeah.

Sam Sethi: 17:58

But one of the trends, I thought, because TuneIn was an aggregator right of radio stations and that was why it was a powerful app. And then they added podcasting. But most radio stations that I listen to now or know about are building their own apps, wanting to own that relationship directly and have other I don't know promos, events, features. So it seems so odd for Apple to do this now, when the trend is actually to take your stuff, well, you might leave it on TuneIn, but you actually drive your audience from the radio show to your own app.

James Cridland: 18:37

Yeah, I think there's a difference here in that TuneIn.

James Cridland: 18:41

You know, tunein is an app, if you like, listening to live radio stations, and so Apple adding its live radio stations there will just give more ears to that radio station.

James Cridland: 18:52

Now they're commercial free, but the point of Apple's radio stations is to bring you in to Apple Music and to get you to buy an Apple device and then be able to have a listen to some of the radio stations in there. But on the other side, because TuneIn produces so many integrations into so many devices, whether that's your Tesla car, whether that's your smart speaker, whatever it happens to be I suspect that that actually means that. You know that's. The thing which Apple finds interesting is the fact that they can be on all of these additional platforms as well to pull people into the main Apple Music service. So perhaps this is the beginning of a bit of a competition between Spotify, in particular, and Apple Music, because this is one thing that Apple has that they've spent a lot of money on, and presumably they're wanting to get some of that money back with additional people buying the Apple Music service.

Sam Sethi: 19:58

So one of the secret sources, I think and we've said it before for Spotify, Spotify is they are everywhere. They are on every device. One of the things we have said is that, you know, Apple aren't stupid. Well, they can be, because they haven't got an. You know, they haven't built an Android native app. They're not everywhere. They are singularly on their own platform. So this seems to be their gateway into being everywhere. And I thought the Wall Street Journal headline, which was Apple makes music push in radio after losing ground to Spotify. So it's that loss of position to Spotify that may have done this. You just talked about earlier using YouTube music. Again, you know, is that now biting into Apple as well?

James Cridland: 20:45

I'm sure that YouTube music is biting into Apple. You know it's a good service, it does a good job and you know both Apple Music and Spotify, you know, are threatened by YouTube as well. Obviously, youtube has access to a ton of videos for music, but I think the other interesting thing that YouTube has access to is some quite unofficial mixes and things that you don't get in, some of the more curated experiences like Spotify and certainly like Apple Music as well. But what Apple has is they've obviously got the radio stations that they run where you know, I mean, some of the programming on there is astonishing. You know Elton John will turn up and do an hour's set on a radio station. They've got Zane Lowe, who used to be on Radio 1. He does a lot of interviews with a lot of stars.

James Cridland: 21:37

So if you are really deeply, heavily into your music, then Apple Music is probably the place for you, actually over something like Spotify. So, you know, I think there's definitely something going on there. But obviously and, by the way, the interesting thing about Apple Music is that it exists on Android phones as well, so you can download the Apple Music app on Android phones. That seems to work perfectly happily, and in fact, for a while, android phones had crossfade, whereas iOS didn't, so you ended up having more features, weirdly, on the Android version than you did on the iOS version Not anymore, but that was certainly the case. So, yeah, I mean it's a good service. You know, I've been playing around with it for the last few months because I got, you know, three months for the price of one, so I thought I would give it a go. But yeah, but you know, youtube Music does a whole lot of other things as well, and it's probably the service that I like the most.

Sam Sethi: 22:40

Now, just in relation to this, Apple are announcing on September the 9th, an event called All Dropping, which is probably the new iPhones, probably the new iOS and macOS will be released. Yeah, and it says here a change of icon for Apple Podcasts. Is that the big podcast announcement? Then the change of icon.

James Cridland: 23:02

Well, they won't be making a big announcement at all, but of course, the new version of iOS and macOS, version 26, includes brand new icons for everything and the Apple Podcasts icon.

James Cridland: 23:14

It just looks a bit more glassy and a bit more fancy and modern, and the only reason why I mentioned that in the newsletter is that, for all of us, we will all need to update our Apple Podcasts logos, because it will be very obvious who has updated them and who hasn't. So that will be coming in probably the week after September, the 9th, if you see what I mean. That's normally when the new version of iOS and macOS is dropped. I'm running it now and it's iOS and macOS is dropped. I'm running it now and it's now fine, my goodness. There was a point a couple of weeks ago where I was really regretting it on my MacBook because, my goodness, it was filling up. There was some bug in there that was literally just filling up all of the hard drive and that was getting a little bit hairy, but they've managed to fix that very, very quickly, which is nice.

Sam Sethi: 24:07

Personally, I'm still running my iPhone 11 Pro Max with iOS 26 on it and I won't be upgrading. I mean, it'll be just another bigger battery, better camera announcement.

James Cridland: 24:21

Yeah, I mean, we don't know yet what the new iPhones are going to look like. I believe that they say that there won't be any folding iPhones. They say that there will be a new ultra thin iPhone design. Wow, who cares about thin phones? I care about phones that have batteries that last forever, and certainly the iPhone that I have, which I think is the. Now, what would it be? The 16 Pro?

Sam Sethi: 24:50

Is that what it is?

James Cridland: 24:51

Yeah With AI intelligence on it or whatever it had Correct, it's the latest Pro thing. Certainly, this phone has never run out of battery. I mean, the battery in it is just astonishing. So yeah, I certainly don't want a thin phone that has worse battery. Thanks very much.

Sam Sethi: 25:13

Yeah, I'm holding out for the foldable phone if it ever comes. But again you know if it's all going to be about. Well, the last announcements, just to close out on this, the last announcements that Apple made, all tended to be canned demos that actually didn't hold true when the product released and then they went oh no, no, that won't be available now until March 2026. It's like well, why did you demo it then?

James Cridland: 25:39

You know, Well, I think you know to be to be fair to Apple, I think one of the things that they do is they launch stuff when it's ready and they aren't normally first with anything. They leave being first to other people and watch what happens there. And I think, from that point of view, that means that, for AI, for example, clearly Google is doing a lot of interesting things with Gemini on the new Pixel and everything else, but Apple, I think, has been. You know, they found AI a little bit difficult and a little bit complicated, and probably rather more complicated than they thought it was going to be.

Sam Sethi: 26:19

But yeah, rumour is they're buying Perplexity.

James Cridland: 26:29

Oh well, well, you know well, let's of view. What is very clear with the new iOS iOS 26, is that every single product on that on the phone certainly has been told you must use AI in some way, shape or form. So you can see the AI being used in Apple Podcasts for the dialogue boost that they have there. You can see AI being used in Apple Music for the segues and the auto mixes which are actually done. You know relatively well about. 95% of them are really good and 5% are awful so, but you can also see AI being used in everything from the texting app to the phone app, to the notes app to pretty well, everything else.

James Cridland: 27:14

That seems pretty clear now that you know there's been an edict from the boss saying you have to build something using our AI tools into your product and make sure that you do that prior to the launch of iOS 16 or iOS 26. So, yeah, I think you know that much is pretty clear, but let's wait and see what happens. Of course, it means that you get liquid glass, which is a very exciting thing. No, not really, so your entire phone will look a bit different, but it does mean for those of us in podcasting that we will need to update all of those little buttons. So as soon as Apple update those little buttons, you'll be the first to know.

Sam Sethi: 27:51

if you read the pod news newsletter right I'm more excited about facebook's new glasses, orion, which is the first true augmented reality glasses, so that don't look like vision pro, which sit around your face like a big block. This will be interesting.

James Cridland: 28:09

This will be interesting well as as you have written in in the uh, in the notes, here you, you say that the apple presentation is going to be a snore fest.

Sam Sethi: 28:19

Glasses man really one day, james, you will be walking into podcast movement or london podcast show with your augmented reality glasses that don't look like you've just had some slab on it, yeah I don't think I will anyway. Yeah, well, we'll see we'll see now in the jobs just related by by chance. Actually on pod news daily there is a job, if you're interested, for apple podcast partnerships and editorial manager, the uk and ireland yes, there is.

James Cridland: 28:55

So this is you're not the boss but you're reporting into the podcast lead, whoever that is in the UK. But if you want to be the person that talks to publishers and creators in terms of Apple podcasts, then yeah, it's a fixed term contract. So I would guess I mean, I'm only guessing here, but I would guess that that probably means that it will be covering for maternity leave or something like that. But it's a good foot in through the door, certainly. So you've got until September the 17th to apply. There's more details. Podnewsnet slash jobs.

Speaker 1: 29:34

Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 29:38

Yes, events Shall. We have a look at some events, Sam. Exciting events happening and some events not happening. So the AMBIs we've learnt that they will be in New York City in February, which is exciting. If you remember, we didn't quite know last week because of the changes in podcast movement evolutions, and now we know that they will be in New York City in February. So that's an exciting thing, yeah.

Sam Sethi: 30:02

but one thing, james. Okay, so I saw that and it was like February for the Ambees March for podcast movements, so they've now separated them from the same event.

James Cridland: 30:13

Yes, absolutely yeah. So the ambis were always tied into evolutions and no longer so. That'll be interesting to see what they do separately, but we do know it's going to be in New York City somewhere, so yeah. So let's wait and find out what that means for all of us. The Australian Podcast Awards, sam if you remember, as I'm sure you do, the ceremony took place last year in November. This year, though, there's no Australian Podcast Awards. This year the event is shifting to 2026, the final entry deadline due in March, so my guess is May or June for the ceremony next year. That essentially means that the entire awards are taking six months off, and there will be no awards for this year. So there's a thing I feel for Haymarket, who are the company that run it, because they don't actually have anybody based here in Australia at all, so it must be a really difficult thing for them to manage. Their closest staffers are based in Singapore, so it must be very hard for them to manage. But, yes, no Australian Podcast Awards this year. So this show will not be winning any of those awards.

James Cridland: 31:28

But speaking of winning awards, sam, what? Tell me more? Have we done something? Many, many congratulations. As you may have heard in the opening jingle, we are Tell me more. Have we done something? Many, many congratulations? As you may have heard in the opening jingle, we are an award winner. We are one of the winners of the 2025 Earworthy Podcast Awards and delighted to see that. Yes, we ended up winning the podcast about a podcast category, the narrowest category of all. Yes, which was really good. We beat Danny Brown. It's always a good thing. So many congratulations to you, because you know you're the producer of this show and everything else.

Sam Sethi: 32:04

Well, I think it's a joint effort. I just really cut and paste the Pod. News Daily.

James Cridland: 32:07

It's not really hard and it says the audio weekly version of its superb daily newsletter acts as a barometer of where podcasting stands. Excellent, so that's very exciting. Very pleased that we have won an award finally.

Sam Sethi: 32:25

Well, you might have to increase your cabinet at home, now you know, to go along with those two webbies that you've got.

James Cridland: 32:31

Oh yes, yes, Did I mention that I've got two webbies.

Sam Sethi: 32:34

You never mentioned it. You're so subtle and got oh yes, yes, did I mention that I've got two Webbys.

James Cridland: 32:34

You never mentioned it, you're so subtle, and the Ambys which, by the way, I still haven't actually received the trophy.

Sam Sethi: 32:40

Oh yeah, of course you've got that one as well.

James Cridland: 32:42

The trophy is still slowly making its way over, but yeah, so that'll be exciting. Thank you, Frank, for giving us that. We won't be able to win an Emmy, though. Even if we turn into a video podcast, we won't be able to win an Emmy. We're not eligible. According to Variety, podcasts aren't eligible if it's a straight video recording of the audio podcast, Because what's that? A podcast and not a TV show, according to an Emmys spokesperson. Interesting because the Golden Globes have a new podcast award, but the Emmys are not recogn. Because the Golden Globes have a new podcast award, but the Emmys are not recognising video podcasts as being video stuff that they're going to give awards for. So there's a thing.

Sam Sethi: 33:22

I wonder how long before BAFTA have a podcast award. We'll see.

James Cridland: 33:26

Well, yes, that'll be interesting to see. A couple of other things. If you are in the UK the APA is from Audio UK You've got until September the 17th to enter that, and if you are in Southern California and Southern California only, it turns out. The Golden Mike Awards have opened the awards programme to independent podcast producers for the first time. I think I wrote from around the US. I'm not entirely convinced that that bit is true. I think you maybe can only be taking part in those awards if you're in Southern California, but anyway, I'm sure that you can find out more details on the website for that.

James Cridland: 34:02

London, the London Podcast Festival, is back next month. King's Place has a new wave of live shows. Tickets and full programme details are available on the King's Place website, which reminds me maybe there's something. I'm in London for a couple of days next month, so maybe there is something when I am there. That would be fun, wouldn't it? Is there something there when I am there? There's? An awful lot of shows are on the 14th and I'm in London on the 15th and the 16th. I think on the 16th I'm going to find a pub somewhere and just tell people that I'm in a pub and see if anybody comes to buy me a beer. That might be fun. But yes, so there's a bunch of shows from the London Podcast Festival running between the 2nd of September and the 14th of September All kinds of stuff that you've heard of and the 14th of September, All kinds of stuff that you've heard of and stuff that you haven't. So you can find more information on their website. Anything else exciting going on.

Sam Sethi: 35:02

No, no, nothing, no, that's it Nothing.

James Cridland: 35:06

I should probably mention the Empowered podcasting conference which is towards the end of this month in Charlotte, radio Days Asia, which is happening in Jakarta in Indonesia next week, which I will be there, and that includes Podcast Day Asia Pod Summit in Calgary in Alberta, september the 19th I will be there as well and Speakfest Night of the Living Pod on October the 10th in Houston in Texas. So if you want some of that, then podnewsnet slash events is where to go.

Speaker 1: 35:39

The Pod News Weekly Review with Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

James Cridland: 35:48

So, sam, I've got some excellent news. Pod News has a new gold supporter, which I'm thrilled by. The very dapper Alex Sanfilippo from Podmatch has come to help us, so Podmatch automatically matches ideal podcast hosts and guests. It's quite clever, and the point of becoming a gold supporter is that he can pay for Podnews to be made so that we don't have to charge people, because that kind of makes sense, doesn't it? So if you would like to become a supporter of the main pod news newsletter, then please do. Podnewsnet slash support is where to go for that. But you had a quick chat with Alex Sanfilippo. He was very excited. He told me over email. I've just been on the pod news weekly Review with Sam. He was very excited, and I think you started by asking him what is Podmatch?

Alex Sanfillipo: 36:42

Yeah. So Podmatch is a software we created just out of a need we saw in the industry, which is basically a way to connect podcasts guests and hosts for interviews, and I know that we live in a world where there's plenty of people wanting to be a guest and hosts have a lot of options. Right. The idea is connecting the right podcast guest and the right podcast host together faster, while handling a lot of the administrative functions automatically throughout it, cause there's just a lot of things we do every single time. So the whole idea was connecting the right people faster and basically, for anyone who's not heard of it, kind of the easiest way to describe is it works kind of like a dating app, but instead of Kennedy for dates, kennedy for podcast interviews. Granted, sam, I have been married too long to be ever on a dating app, but I'm told that they work very similar.

Sam Sethi: 37:18

Good answer. Just in case the wife hears this interview, right? Good answer, thank you. Now talking of matching people, though. So pod match. How does it work? Do I rock up, I register myself and then other people say, yes, I'd like to interview you? Or how do I, as a creator, find people? So tell me how the whole process works.

Alex Sanfillipo: 37:38

Yeah, sure, we have two models. We have the individual side and we have the agency model as well. I'll skip the agency model today, but basically I will just briefly mention if you're a booking agent, whether you're booking people on podcast or booking guests on podcast. Either way, we have an agency model that's good for people. But the individual side is really the core of what we do. And, yes, if you're a host, you would just go to the website and you'd start the signup process and it'll walk you through all the different things that we need basically for our system the algorithm, the AI to do really good matching and same on the guest side. Someone's like well, maybe I have a podcast, but I also want to be a guest. Same thing, and you can have one login with both those sides of the account. But the whole thing is right when you go to the website. We want to be very intuitive. So, from start to finish. It kind of holds your hand a little bit and the idea is, when you're done building out your profile, yes, the matching will automatically start and you can message in the platform, you can schedule in the platform. Like, you never have to exchange an email if you don't want to and that's kind of the beauty of stream podcast guest or as a podcast host or as both. But regardless, you've got these beautiful high ranking on search engines on AIs now profile that you can use as a media one sheet for your show or for you as an individual. And that's one of the things that we don't really talk about as a benefit on pod match. But the reality is that's been good for a lot of people Because, once again, questions it would usually come in like hey, alex, I need pictures of you for this interview Great, my Podmatch profile has, where you can literally download approved pictures.

Alex Sanfillipo: 38:57

Oh, you want my bio? Great, it's on my profile. You want questions? I'm ready to be asked. It's there and same on the flip side for my show. You want to understand the audience, the flow, who I'm looking for? It's all listed in that one place and that's all mentioned and asked during the signup process of Podmatch.

Sam Sethi: 39:12

Okay, and does this give me good SEO as well? Can I use my profile for something that people can find me on outside of Podmatch with a link back to the profile?

Alex Sanfillipo: 39:22

Yes, absolutely, and every profile doubles as an affiliate link. So somebody goes to your profile and they see the public version of it. It shows a little bit less detail than the internal version. So if you're signed up for Podmatch, but it does prompt people, hey, if you want to interview this guest or if you want to be a guest on this podcast, click here to sign up and then it'll automatically work as that person's affiliate link.

Alex Sanfillipo: 39:45

But from an SEO perspective, we worked with a couple different experts on this and I didn't even know what schema markup is. And this is an SEO podcast and, sam, I know you know that world well, but that was apparently a thing that we were overlooking. We're like, hey, if you want this to rank higher in search engines, you want the large language model AIs to be able to figure out who somebody is based off a Podmatch profile. You've got to work on this stuff. So we have put a lot of time and energy into it. We still are to help that, help somebody rank higher, and the idea is it will just increase their authority as an individual and we can kind of see like the future of search is going toward the individual's credibility, and so we wanted to be able to help that.

Alex Sanfillipo: 40:16

We had somebody recently leave Podmatch, which is always upsetting to me. But they said hey, what did you all do to me? I'm like what do you mean? They're like my website visitors went down. My podcast listenership went down. Like, did you do that to me Because I left Podmatch? I'm like no, that's just a by-product of no longer having a profile on those two places. It was probably your best ranking profile on the internet and that was something we really wanted to do just as a bonus for everybody. So to me, that's really important.

Sam Sethi: 40:40

So is this aimed at independent podcast creators or is this aimed at the big podcasters? Who's the target audience?

Alex Sanfillipo: 40:48

Thank you for asking that, sam. I don't know if anyone's ever asked me that, but it's the independent creator. Me personally, I'm an independent creator myself. I have my own show and I just love being an individual creator and I believe in the power that has on the world, like together, right there, sure, there's, there's one show that might be bigger than all of ours combined almost Right. But the reality is I really love the heart behind what an individual does and how it serves people. So we're always going to be all for the individual, the small, independent podcaster. And when I go to conferences I don't try to meet the keynotes of the big names Not that I have anything against them, of course they're great. Everyone wants to meet them, everyone wants to sign their show right For me. I want to meet the new person 10, 20 episodes in, that has a real passion, a real purpose for it, and that's that's what gets me up in the morning and gets me really excited to be in this space.

Sam Sethi: 41:35

So, with Podmatch, is there a payment requirement from the guest or the host in terms of because one of the things that I've been approached numerous times oh, we can get you on a show, but it'll cost you so much money, right? And I'm like, nah, I'm okay, I'll just ring them. If I really want to be on that show, I'll connect with them and if I have value, as in what I've got to say, they'll have me as a guest, and if I haven't got value, then I'm not paying for it, right? So where's the money flow in this?

Alex Sanfillipo: 42:04

Yeah, we do things very I don't know. I don't want to call it like anti. Well, you know, it's just, it's not common, it's not conventional wisdom when it comes to software and I've been told we don't do it right by many people. So I know that if you're hearing this and you have an idea for me, it's okay. I'm probably not going to go with it, but feel free to reach out. But we actually have no free tier, we have no trial. It's you pay and then you can start, and we've done that since the beginning, just not since the beginning, actually. We did that maybe a year in and the weird thing is when I did that, our amount of signups organically quadrupled overnight. And still this day we grow, mostly organically, and it just basically kind of weeds out people that maybe aren't serious, aren't ready yet, but the pricing can always change, but I don't foresee that ever happening, on the host side at the very least.

Alex Sanfillipo: 42:46

So on the host side, it's $6 a month to be a host on Podmatch. That's unlimited matches, as many or as few as you want. Limited matches, as many or as few as you want. So we have some people that do daily podcasts. We have some people that do a monthly episode, and so it's as much or as little as you want. But the one thing that we added is we call it our pod value initiative. So if you're a podcast host on the platform through a pod value initiative, which you're automatically enrolled into, we actually pay podcast hosts to use the platform and it's not a whole lot, but the goal is to help them offset their production cost. We charge $6 a month for law of buy-in.

Alex Sanfillipo: 43:15

I did some personal training many years ago, sam, and I've learned that all of my worst clients were the ones I gave a deal to or the ones I trained for free. They never took it seriously. They never really were willing to invest in themselves, because I told them you don't need to be, just come and I'll help you however I can. And so when it came to podcasting, we realized the same thing. We charge $6 a month, not to make $6 a month off of you. We give it back to you, plus a lot more. I just need to know that you're serious. If you can't pull up your wallet, I can't pull mine out for you. And so our goal is to break a million dollars back in the hands of podcasters, and at time of recording, we're just over $900,000 we've given back, and so I'm really excited about that, like that's been a goal from day one and it's just our way of helping them offset their production costs, because there's money involved in podcasting.

Alex Sanfillipo: 43:55

Now, on the guest side, alicia my wife she's the one who knows the numbers really well, so, forgive me, I don't actually know how much it costs. But we've done our best to keep it very affordable as well. That way we can have people that have real stories, independent people. We don't want to remove people from the platform or keep them from getting on if they can't afford it, so we kept it at a price point that's affordable to make sure that people would be able to join and again share authentically that independent creator, that person who maybe has a newer business or just doesn't have a lot financially, but they have a really good story. So we've done our best to keep the whole thing affordable and that's going to be our long-term goal. We don't have this future pricing structure that's going to increase it over time. We want to make sure that it's good for everybody. We want to be people that are really serious.

Sam Sethi: 44:35

So what's next on the roadmap for Podmatch? I mean, where do you want to take it next?

Alex Sanfillipo: 44:40

Yeah. So the big goal is to break that million dollars. My goal is by the end of 2025 and then in 2026, we'd like to double that. So once we kind of figured it out and the other thing that we've been really working on we added an embedded player into the podcast profiles and we're seeing that bring a lot of traffic to podcast and so we're really doubling down on again the SEO, the schema markup, getting it ranked on search engines, and large language models to help podcast listeners find podcasts as well. So I think the next thing I want to help with is that.

Alex Sanfillipo: 45:07

But we don't like to keep people on Podmatch. If you're just a listener, the profile doesn't make sense. And that's kind of where we come in, wanting to work with true fans, like places where people can actually go and engage right, like we're never going to be that. We want to help with that initial introduction, and there's so many places that I feel like they're great listening experiences, but when it comes to the introduction it's a little bit more difficult. We have so much information that the hosts have made available that we can do that. So what we're really focused on right now is helping podcasts grow as well and get discovered. I don't care to keep all the listenership on Podmatch, but if that's your initial way of finding it, I want to make sure that you get to the next best place where it fits you afterwards. So we're kind of working on now matching podcasts and listeners, like we're kind of done with doing the host and the guest type of thing.

Sam Sethi: 45:50

If I wanted to sign up for Podmatch, where would I go?

Alex Sanfillipo: 45:53

Podmatch, where would I go? Podmatchcom has everything that you'll need, and I do always tell people, though start at podmatchcom, slash free. Whether you're a podcast guest host or aspiring guest or host or even an agency, there's something there for you. It's just nine quick ideas, and I don't ask for your email address or anything like that. There's just some things I think can help podcasters out. So, but if you start at podmatchcom, slash free, take a look at those nine ideas. It's just kind of some of the things that have really stood out to me over the years. But, sam, you're amazing. Thank you for for doing what you do, and I'm truly honored to be here today. This was, this is absolutely a gift alex, reciprocate, mate, reciprocate.

Sam Sethi: 46:25

Thank you for taking the time.

James Cridland: 46:26

Speeches soon, my friend take care thank you again the very excellent alex san filipo and, of course, on the Podmatch website. Also, now is the time, of course, for everybody to post about Podcast Movement, and so Dave Jackson was one of those giving lessons that he learned from Podcast Movement. He is hardcore, is Dave Jackson, because he went from the Podcast Movement conference to another podcast conference somewhere else. Wow, I know, I mean, that's properly hardcore, that is. I would not like to go to another podcast conference after podcast movement. So well done to him. I wonder if he's got any voice left at all. It'd be interesting to find out, sofie more likely.

James Cridland: 47:07

Yes, yes, no. Exactly. So anyway, that is linked to from the Pod News newsletter this week.

Speaker 1: 47:13

The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 47:17

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology.

Sam Sethi: 47:22

So RSScom have added chapter support for Spotify's chapters, which uses the oddly German Podlove. Simple chapter specification why?

James Cridland: 47:34

My understanding of the Podlove chapter specification is that it is within the RSS feed, which is something that quite a lot of people don't really want to do, because obviously, to change the chapters, you need to change the RSS feed and then the chapters need to be embedded and everything else. However, that does mean that they are slightly better in terms of privacy, because therefore, it means that your app or your device isn't downloading that chapter file as you play the show, so perhaps there's some benefit there. Anyway, spotify supports the Podlove simple chapter specification and now RSScom do as well, so that is very good news. That means that if you are on rsscom, then chapters will work everywhere for you, which is nice. They're also launching their support for the location tag their proper support for the location tag soon, and they're doing stuff around the funding tag as well, so they're doing a bunch of things. Just wondering, sam, I'm guessing you support the new location tag, you support the funding tag, obviously, and you support Podlove chapters in True Fans. Is that what that is we do? Yes, yeah.

Sam Sethi: 48:40

We've supported the Podlove chapters for about six months now. We found that a lot of people were beginning to add support for them, shows like the News Agents, for example. Why? Because not to be in Spotify, but because of YouTube, and they were using them for YouTube chapters. So we thought, okay, if we can't beat them, let's join them, and so the way it works. It'll be interesting when rsscom roll it out. So let's say, this show, for example, has podcasting 2.0 chapters, but if we also added pod love chapters in the same feed, at the moment our logic is, if we find podcasting 2.0 chapters, we display those in the chapter tab, but if we don't find them, then we will defer back to the pod love chapters. We won't make the Podlove chapter the primary.

James Cridland: 49:36

Yeah, I think that makes sense and yeah, no, that's. Yeah, it's interesting. It must be very difficult to be able to support those two, and ideally you would want to support the ID3 chapters in the actual feed as well, and those are much harder to support because it requires you know passing your way through the entire file. But yeah, so, yeah, chapters are not an easy thing, and I didn't fully appreciate the privacy concerns that some people have, particularly Marco Arment has, about a separate JSON file and a separate JSON file, by by the way, that also picks up images as well in there as well. So, yeah, it was certainly interesting to see. Yeah, but I I.

Sam Sethi: 50:19

The one thing I don't like about them when they're hard coded is, if you want to make changes, like we do, so, for example with this show, you will publish it because you've edited it. I will then go back into buzzsprout and then update the chapters that you've created with imagery and links, and then that will get republished via pod ping. That wouldn't work with pod love, would it? You'd have to redistribute the whole rss feed again.

James Cridland: 50:48

Yes, indeed, indeed so different, these different things. And, of course, if you're going to change it in the ID3 tags in the audio, then you'd have to re-download the audio. So you know, so, different methods work in different ways, but yeah, so it must be very difficult to support all three of those things. I am, though, going to because the PodClock podcast is back. I turned PodClock off about two years ago, which was originally an April Fool's joke and no one noticed.

Sam Sethi: 51:22

No sorry.

James Cridland: 51:25

Yeah, well, yes, correct. So it was originally an April Fool's joke. It's now not. It's now a podcast app testing tool, and you can find all kinds of things in there, as well as find out what what time of day it is. If you want to do that, and one of the things that I plan on doing is to add an additional episode in there, which is probably an hour long episode with chapters every minute, just to see whether or not the stories that I've been hearing recently about you being able to use chapter images to work out how far into a podcast you've got actually works or not, because I'm kind of not entirely convinced that that's going to work. So what better than just to give it a go? So I'm going to produce an hour long piece of audio somehow It'll probably be a very repetitive piece of looping music and see what happens. You know in terms of how that works from a chapter point of view.

Sam Sethi: 52:24

Yeah, I've heard this first party data solution from hosts several times now. Yeah, we don't need to get first party data from apps. We can do it through checking where you are in your chapter. I've even heard this for oh, with HLS, because it's six second chunks, we'll know exactly where you are. Great, but it's still not first party data.

James Cridland: 52:46

Yes, and I'm still not quite sure. I mean obviously with HLS, it will pre-cache, and my guess is that it will pre-cache as well in terms of the, in terms of the chapters as well. It'll pre-cache the images. That's my guess. So what would be nice is to have something where you start playing. You know, you, you you can have a listen to an episode and at the same time, have a look at a, at a at web page, which is actually showing you what I can see about you playing that piece of audio. That would be quite fun to do, if I can work out how to do it. I may not be able to do it quite as smartly as that, but we will see.

Sam Sethi: 53:25

Now, one of the most interesting links on Pod News Daily this week was when you put link to something called Media Over Quick and I was was wow, what the hell's this? Because we're all talking about hls and we're all looking at whether it's a viable solution. You know, both from a cost and also from a user experience and then suddenly cloudflare come out with this media over quick. So what's this one, james?

James Cridland: 53:53

I understand very little about media media over quick, other than there seems to be some kind of relay transport layer involved. There seems to be some kind of low latency stuff built into it as well, using web rtc, which is the stuff that you build remote recording tools, for example, with and yes, so it seems to be that sort of thing. I don't know whether you've looked into it in a little bit more.

Sam Sethi: 54:24

Yeah.

James Cridland: 54:24

Yeah, I mean does oh well, I mean, of course, truefans is already supporting it, I'm assuming.

Sam Sethi: 54:30

No, no, no no, no, no, not yet. No, I was interested because the evolution of the web has always been iterative right, so we've gone from. I think HLS is. What a decade old possibly.

James Cridland: 54:46

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 54:47

So you know, and then there's low latency HLS, and these were designed for specific solutions, and HLS is great for live podcasting, because that's something that we want to implement. And then I looked at this and what someone's done is taken all the things like RTMP and and all of the web, rtc and all of the other bits of technology that are probably a decade or more old and said about time, we updated all of this stuff and they've come up with a new way of faster, more reliable data delivery. Now, whether that gets adopted, because one thing I worry about most new technologies like this is it's a decade before adoption.

James Cridland: 55:30

Yeah, and you'll need to build it into the operating system and that will take time and you'll need to. So, I mean, my understanding is that it uses this thing called QUIC, which is essentially HTTP3. It's the new way of delivering information over the Internet, so you've got that kind of stuff rather than using TCP IP. That then allows you to do a few other things. It allows you to send files, you know, in a better way, and they talk about all kinds of exciting things, but obviously what that means is that, from a podcast hosting point of view, it means entirely new servers, entirely new. You new, you know help and obviously cloudflare are very excited by it, because if they support it and not very many other people do, and then they will get more people using their service. So of course, they're going to be very, very excited by it. Well, I think, I think probably this is, this is a thing for another another 10 years in the future.

Sam Sethi: 56:34

Certainly yeah, I mean it's also. I mean, look, tcp IP is over 25 years old.

Sam Sethi: 56:39

I mean when Vint Cerf came up with it. So you know, let's be clear. Tcp IP was the protocol stack requirement that actually gave birth to what Microsoft did and Netscape did with browsers, because before that you had to load your own protocol stack and that was just a pain in the backside if you weren't a geek. And then Microsoft included TCP IP in the OS and then suddenly the browser sat on top of it and suddenly it all worked. But that's 25 years old technology, right? So clearly people have looked at it. As you said, http3, browsers will need to adopt this first, then you've got to get OSs and then you've got to get everyone to upgrade.

James Cridland: 57:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, now I think it'll be. You know, it's a long time into the future. Yes, you've just reminded me that of course you needed a Winsock. The future yes, you've just reminded me that of course you needed a Winsock. You needed Winsock when you were first using things like Windows 95 or Windows no, windows 2, I think you had to have Winsockdll, which was the whole thing that turned on TCP IP. Now Quick is built into Google Chrome, so quite a lot of the stuff that you do now is using QUIC rather than TCP IP, and in fact, podnews is QUIC enabled. So if you're using Chrome, you can access when you access the PodNews website. One of the reasons why it's so fast is that it's quick enabled through HTTP 3. So that's nice, and it's IP version 6 enabled as well, and various other things.

Sam Sethi: 58:20

So I've made sure that I've. Did you do that, yeah, or was that automatically done?

James Cridland: 58:24

That was me turning things on in Amazon Cloud front. Yes, so Amazon offer it, but you have to turn these particular things on, or at least you certainly did when I, when I first ended up doing this. So, yeah, this is if you're, if you're expecting an easy to understand tech stuff section, this is not, it this?

Sam Sethi: 58:46

week. If you really are into your tech and you want to know what's coming down the track, I highly recommend going and finding the link. It's called Media Over Quick and it's a really long, in-detail blog post from Cloudflare.

James Cridland: 59:03

Well, let's bring it back to earth. Podcast badges and images. Nathan Gathright has a big list of podcast badges that's now part of Podlink, because obviously Nathan now owns Podlink. I was giving him a podcast movement. I was giving him a large amount of feature requests for how Podlink ought to work, including, if you wouldn't mind, an API into it as well. But yes, if you want badges for your website or badges if maybe you are running a podcast hosting company and you want to make sure that you've got the latest badges and all of that for individual podcast apps and things like that, then now you want to be going to badgespodlinkcom and that is where you'll find all of the nice badges in both dark mode and in light mode on there as well. So it's a very cool thing, great resource if you're building that sort of thing. What else has gone on Podstock? Podstock is interesting, did you? Yeah, I thought it was a festival when I first read that. Do you know? There was a podstock. That was a festival, oh was there yes.

James Cridland: 1:00:12

And in fact, we covered that in the Pod News newsletter all the way back when, I think, they announced that Podstock was going to be a new podcast conference, the first in New Jersey history back in 2022. It was in Trenton in New Jersey. Anyway, that is no more, but Podstock is a company, it's a new service and what it offers a bit like the bumper dashboard. It goes and grabs lots of information from Apple, from Spotify, from YouTube, from all of that, so it brings that back into one dashboard for you and your podcast. Their secret sauce, though, is, if you're using services that produce short form clips for your podcast, it will automatically work out where those are from and and add those into all of your numbers. So you can actually go back to a guest and say XT million people saw, saw you either on a clip or on the main podcast, which is pretty clever. So it's a new tool from them, called Episode 360, that you can find out more about. Where's their website, podstockio, it turns out.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:24

Nice. Can I play with that a little later on? Now Google is tightening security measures around Android app distribution. I was listening to John Spurlock on Podcasting 2.0. And you know, to my surprise, it was hard to get the Android app approved. It was the iOS app when I was doing TrueFans and John was saying well, basically, there's more devices, they've got to be much more stringent. But one of the things that Google has allowed, which Apple doesn't do or has only done begrudgingly, is allowed for other app stores. But this is now looking at making sure that they tighten up on what developers are doing, even off Google Play Store. So I've had to do this. I've had to go and give my blood and inside leg measurement to Apple. Sorry to Google. There's a form you can go through, but it's very interesting. In that form it does ask you are you distributing through other third party sites or just on Google Play Store?

James Cridland: 1:02:33

Yeah, and I think the concern for some people about all of this is that it does mean that you won't be able to get people to download your app, to sideload it, because at the moment, the big difference between Android and iOS is that you can just download and install any piece of software from anywhere, any piece of software from anywhere. The operating system will kind of stop you from doing that, but as long as you press the right buttons, then you can download an APK from anywhere at all. Now that means two things that means piracy and that also means viruses. But it does mean that somebody like me, for example, can actually write a Android app and can install it onto my phone and all the phones of my friends without Google getting in the way. Now Google is going to get in the way, and what some people have been saying is that this is typical Google.

James Cridland: 1:03:24

They start with an open source piece of software, they encourage lots of people to contribute to it, to make it an amazingly brilliant piece of open source software, and then, slowly but surely, they remove the open sourceness of it, and what we may well see going on here is that actually, it becomes harder and harder for you to be able to produce.

James Cridland: 1:03:52

You know, for you to be able to take your old Android phone and, you know, stick a new ROM on it or do weird and wonderful things with it if you wanted to, and basically everything is going to be the Apple way of going through the Apple App Store and that's it. So lots of people jumping up and down and very, very upset about it. I think the one thing that I would say is I use Android on an e-book reader, for example, and I can get different e-book readers onto that device, and I'm very pleased about that, and this would kind of get in the way of doing that in the future. And obviously there are quite a lot of cars now with Android various versions of Android, you know, in the car, and again, that may stop us from tweaking and fiddling around with those devices as well, but that's probably not a bad thing, I suppose.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:42

Yeah, I would have thought, though, that you know as a support call requirement if you're sideloading uncertified apps. It must be a nightmare for Google, you know. Oh yeah, they've got more devices than Apple to support more versions of the Android operating system to support, and now you have third parties aren't certified. I think this is just a fairly logical thing in the evolution.

James Cridland: 1:05:09

Yes, yes, no, I think so. So, yeah, no, it's going to be interesting to see how all of that bit works. But, yes, there's a lot of people, on the Fediverse in particular, who are very upset about all of this, and they're even getting upset about the word sideloading, because, yes, that would be bad.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:34

Yes, that would be bad. Now we were talking about John Spurlock, who was on last week's Podcasting 2.0 with Adam Curry, dave Jones. He announced that he's building a futuristic Android app.

John Spurlock: 1:05:46

Well, I've been working on a podcast app for a while and I work for Android at Google and I think obviously most people listen and watch podcasts on their phone, on their mobile devices. So you know, I've been working on an app. I don't want to ideally compete with all the other cool apps that are out there, right, so I don't want to be another like, hey, this is overcast, but a little bit better and doesn't crash and doesn't look horrible. You know it's like yes, the world probably needs one of those, but I would hate to take away share from those sorts of apps, right. And so it's like I don't I yes, I could do that and I have actually an app that I use that kind of does that. But I kind of wanted to take a step back and say, like what could a podcast app look like? Right, so this is like podcast app from the future kind of thing. And I did.

John Spurlock: 1:06:35

I do think I hit on something, that there's one thing that I again ideally like we just take stuff away from YouTube and Spotify and not from the others. I did think. I think I hit on one thing that I could do as the first, like major feature of the app that both of those do, that no one else does, and then it kind of like is in its own space, cool. So I'm hoping to get it out this year because you know they have the new new os cadence. Yeah, I think it's coming. The new phones are being announced on the 9th of september, but I probably won't be ready for that. But it's going to be. It's going to be a weird app, let's just put it that way. Oh, I love you, know me, I like I like different weird apps with an attitude.

James Cridland: 1:07:15

That's what I've been waiting for, so I anticipate that it's going to be interesting to find out quite what John is working on. I am always fascinated at seeing how his brain works and seeing what he's going to end up launching. So you know, John, hurry up, and please can you make the iOS version first.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:33

No, I'm going with no UI and it's voice enabled only.

James Cridland: 1:07:37

Oh yeah, well. Well, that'll be great, won't it Gosh?

Sam Sethi: 1:07:42

Now talking of people, Barry Lubrex, the CEO of Podhome, friend of the show. I'm still allowed to say that he has also been hinting on various WhatsApp groups about his new podcast app. It's currently in beta so, yeah, I haven't seen it. Be, interesting to see what he does as well.

James Cridland: 1:08:00

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see whether that's just another podcast app or whether there's some secret source. Like Mr Spurlock, descript has added additional voice support from 11 Labs and also from Nano Banana. What's Nano Banana?

Sam Sethi: 1:08:17

Nano Banana is this thing that Google is putting out. It's a generational model, so it's a bit like VO3. So it's called Nano Banana. That's the name of it. It's their newest image model.

James Cridland: 1:08:30

Can you imagine the grownups at Apple calling something Nano Banana?

Sam Sethi: 1:08:36

No, wow, wow, nope, so anyway. So what I found interesting, though, is so we talk about WonderCraft and all the great things they do, but the underlying engine is 11 Labs.

James Cridland: 1:08:52

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:52

All of the technology really is 11 Labs and WonderCraft's this great UI on top and Descript now has simply gone. Yep, we'll go and do 11 Labs as well. Right, we'll add that. And we're adding various new, and I don't get why they're adding imaging LLMs or imaging generation models, but they are.

James Cridland: 1:09:10

Well, they do video, don't they? They do video.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:14

And I'm just wondering where this is all going, because it's I mean, I am a Descript user, you know that, and it's becoming so complex to understand it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Cridland: 1:09:24

No, indeed, indeed. Well, let's watch out for that. And Castos has added a nice new embedded player which looks very nice. It uses oEmbed support. Oembed support is really helpful because you just copy the link into a Medium post or a WordPress post or whatever, and WordPress knows enough to go and have a look at that page and work out how to embed the information in there. So that's a very smart thing. So well done to Castos for doing that.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:56

Few other launches, james, that you were writing about. One's called ZenStream, which is a smart clip generator. Another one was called NestPod, which was a 100% private and free podcast manager, and the last one was called CastClip, which makes clips from podcasts yes, lots of which is tedious and annoying.

James Cridland: 1:10:16

Yes, lots of clip software which? Yes, lots of lots of clip software. Which is exciting. Nestpod is worth a look at, if only because the way that it works is that it stores the podcasts that you listen to, your subscription list. Essentially, it stores that on your browser, because it's a whole browser thing. You can sync that with additional devices, but everything is very much encrypted, so there is no way that NestPod would be able to know what podcasts you're subscribed to or anything, because all of this happens in the browser. So it's a very interesting model it's weird to use. So I mean, I'm assuming that nest pod is not john spurlock's thing, you know but there we are.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:06

Google aren't going to sue them for the nest name.

James Cridland: 1:11:08

Yeah, oh, yeah, well, yes, gosh, yes, although google apparently are now turning off all of the nest thermostats. So if you have a first, second or third generation thermostat, then tough, because that's not going to work I have brilliant too yeah, well, sorry, sorry, they're turning them off apple should have bought that anyway yes, well, so, yeah, so nest pod is just worth a look at just to think of yeah, okay, well, how how would you do that?

James Cridland: 1:11:34

you know the sinking thing I. I thought was quite clever. So anyway, worth a peek, you'll find. Where will you find NestPod? You'll find NestPod at nest-podorg.

Speaker 1: 1:11:47

Boostergram, boostergram, boostergram, super, super comments, zaps, fan mail, fan mail, super chats and email. Our favourite time of the week, it's the Pod News Weekly Review Inbox.

James Cridland: 1:12:01

Yes, so many different ways to get in touch with us Fan mail by using the link in our show notes, super comments in True Fans or Boosts everywhere else, or, of course, email, and if you would like to send us some money or some sats, then that would be very kind of you. We will share that amongst us too.

James Cridland: 1:12:17

Not amongst the rest of the of the pod news team, assuming there is one and most certainly not amongst the rest of the of the podcast movement team as well, because of course they have 50 of us, but I have the other 50 anyway. Where are we? Oh, we've got some boosts, sam. What have we got from lyceum?

Sam Sethi: 1:12:36

anyway, where are we? Oh, we've got some boosts. So what have we got from lyceum 1701, which clearly I never remember what that means, but it does have a meaning. Congrats for being ear worthy. Is the trophy shaped as near martin? I'll never know, because it goes straight to james's cabinet. So who knows?

James Cridland: 1:12:52

yes, yes, who knows? 17, by the way, is an angel number in astrology and it represents new beginnings, spiritual awakenings and manifestation power. Wow, yes.

James Cridland: 1:13:04

So there we are, another row of Richards from Lyceum. James, how can I get your sticker? Is it time for me to become a power supporter? Yes, yes, it's time for you to become a power supporter. Time for you to become a power supporter. Here's a super comment with a row of stickers, ie a digital telegram or boostergram with a donation of 1111 Satoshi's open brackets. Bits of Bitcoin close brackets. Thanks for explaining that. That's very kind of you. How can you get a sticker? You have to. I'm afraid it's a in-meet-space thing only turns out. So, yes, that's how that's going to work. Lyceum, thank you. Oh, one more 420sats. Yes, we know what that is from Lyceum. I look forward to testing it out. This is talking about Wondercraft or Wonder.

James Cridland: 1:13:47

Did you have a beer at Podcast Movement? I have great food memories from a deli restaurant in Dallas. Not only did I have a beer Lyceum, not only did I have a beer Lyceum, not only did I have a beer, but also I discovered that a quick Uber ride away was a brew pub that served all manner of beer that it makes itself, which was very good. So I have a friend of mine who I see every podcast movement conference and every podcast movement. We tipped her away and go and visit the brew pub, which is what we did and it was very enjoyable, and for half of it we sat inside and then there was a band setting up and we thought, no, we don't want that, and so the other half we sat outside in a proudly mosquito free beer garden. I'm not quite sure how that works.

Alex Sanfillipo: 1:14:34

How.

James Cridland: 1:14:36

Yeah, but no. So it was very good. And you're wondering what it was called now, aren't you? And yes, if only I could think Hop and Sting. It was called Hop and Sting in Grapevine Grapevine, by the way, sam, was a lovely little place. So if you imagine a horrible hotel with lots of you know, with you know fountains inside and three different restaurants and everything else, that's basically like the oval office. Yeah, now, now, now now. So if you imagine that, that that's where the conference was and everything else. But grapevine was 10 minutes uber away and grapevine was this lovely old-fashioned place.

James Cridland: 1:15:15

And last, on the last day, I went out for a wander through through Grapevine, because I had literally nothing to do after finishing editing the Pod News Weekly Review. I mean, really, I should have done all of the chapters but I didn't. But anyway, we went to have a nice walk and I walked past this place and it said Landmark Coffee and I thought, well, that looks nice, that looks as if they might actually be able to make coffee. So I went in. They had signs outside and everything. So I went in and I said hello and they looked at me as if I was the weirdest thing ever and they went hi and I said I was hoping for a coffee and they said, oh okay, yeah, we can give you a coffee. And they said, oh okay, yeah, we can give you a coffee. And I thought, what is going on here? I've just walked into a coffee shop May seem really confused as to why I was there.

James Cridland: 1:16:04

Anyway, it turned out this was Friday. It turned out that they were opening on Saturday and I just turned up a day early. But I did have a very good flat white and what was quite entertaining? They didn't do flat white on their menu. But I said, could I have a flat white please? And they knew exactly what I was asking for, and so they were able to get a little bit of training in on what happens when a foreigner comes in and asks for something that isn't on the menu. But yeah, very good, I would recommend it. It's called Landmark Coffee and it's an old filling station that's more than 100 years old in the middle of Grapevine, and, yes, it was a very good and excellent coffee that no one will be going to. Who listens to this show?

Sam Sethi: 1:16:43

No, because no one's going back to Dallas.

James Cridland: 1:16:45

No, no, they're going to New York next, James.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:48

Yes, so you can recommend a coffee shop in New York next time.

James Cridland: 1:16:50

Oh I can I actually can One run by run by australians as well. So we will do that closer to the time, I think okay. Have we mentioned all of the oh we're rw nash 1000 sats podcasting? It's adam curry from the dsc era, yes. The daily source code era, yes. No doubt mentioning the photograph that I managed to get with the podfather himself the man who is?

James Cridland: 1:17:15

taller than he's taller than me. He's taller than me. I know it's astonishing. He's not as tall as Rob Greenlee, though, who is taller, but nevertheless he is taller than me, and right at this precise moment, he is emptying his dishwasher, because that's what he does when he listens to this show. It must take him a hell of a long time. Yes, anyway, thank you so much to the 21 Power supporters for giving us an amount of fiat money every single month. That's very kind of you. People like Rocky Thomas, who, of course, we saw at the Podcast Movement, or indeed I did Claire Waite-Brown, who was another nominee in the Earworthy Awards Sorry that you didn't win that category, claire Dave Jackson, who was at Podcast Movement as well, and Matt Medeiros as well. You can join this list of 21 different people by visiting weeklypodnewsnet. Hopefully, lyceum will be doing that very, very shortly. So what's been happening for you this week, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:18:15

Well, I may sound a little bit tired today, because I've had three hours sleep. Oh, wow, okay why is?

James Cridland: 1:18:22

why is that? Have you is it? Has there been a big party in your house?

Sam Sethi: 1:18:26

yeah, there has. Yeah, it's my daughter's 21st and so we she did a party in the garden, which then required me to put all the lights out in the garden plus set up marquees, and then serve as the waiter last night for all the drinks and then the dj as well, and then they all decided to go to bed at around three, four o'clock this morning, which is eventually when I got to sleep. So, yeah, a little bit knackered, and currently somewhere outside of this room that I'm in is half a dozen 20 year olds somewhere wandering around. So god knows what I'm going to find when I come out good lord.

James Cridland: 1:19:01

Well, there's a thing, yeah, you've got. You've got a tidy up to do now.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:04

I've got to do it again on Saturday because we've got the family one, so last night was her mates, and then we've got the family one, so round two coming up.

James Cridland: 1:19:12

Nice, that's what you need have you been doing anything exciting in True Fans as well?

Sam Sethi: 1:19:17

Yeah, I mean we have been evolving this podcast promo idea so I think I talked about last week. You can buy space on the homepage, in the header or on one of the carousels, and you can buy that with Sats or Fiat. We've extended that now. So very similar to what libsyn did and what I think captivated planning. But we don't do rss feed injection, we just simply allow you to buy space on the podcast page. So, for example, if somebody wanted to buy space on the true fans yeah yeah, pod news weekly review.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:55

They could put it into the second slot and then they just pay, and so you as the creator, get paid. But what we've done on it is a value for value type model.

Sam Sethi: 1:20:03

So in the sense that the person who wants to buy space on your page it's not a fixed fee they make an offer to you, the creator, and if you accept that offer, it then appears, and if you don't accept it, you can reject it and it won't appear at all that's it very simple fancy and then the other thing that we're working on and I think this is something that we've been trying we we do a feature called co-listen, which, if you follow people within true fan so we have a social model you will then get a notification that says oh, james has listened to the same episode as you, right? And then you can click on it and then you'll see where you are in the timeline and I can jump to the same point or I can stay listening to where I am. So that's been working. And then what was missing was the ability to well say, oh so your friend James is listening, well, why don't you two chat about the episode that you're both listening to?

Sam Sethi: 1:20:56

So the next feature we want to add is co-chat, and of course that leads to then super chats, which is why we had super comments rather than boosts, and so yeah, and then messaging as well. So all of that stuff. And again, you know, I know your brother's the ex-MPP guru, but I don't know what we're going to use.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:15

I think we're going to use WebSockets instead, but anyway, we'll let you know I think he would agree with that too.

James Cridland: 1:21:23

So very good. Yes, and the screenshot that you've put in here has your real name on there, which is all very exciting. Yes, don't reveal.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:31

No, no, good Lord, I once did this, where I forgot to use my real name on my airplane ticket ah, yes, oh my god, I had to buy a bloody new ticket, practically yes, of course you would have done yes, you would have done yes, yes you have to match what it says in the passport.

James Cridland: 1:21:52

And exactly one of the things that I have learned. So you know, if you've got a d, a DJ name like Sam Sethi, then you need to be careful there. One of the things that I have learned is that the middle name is also important too, particularly in this part of the world. So if you forget to put your middle name in, then there are some airlines that will not let you board because the name in your passport is different to the name which is on your ticket. If you haven't put your middle name on. Yeah, so everything has to have my middle name on there, just in case I've got one of the weird airlines that insists on that, because, of course, you know, in many parts of Asia there is no such thing as a middle name and, frankly, there's no such thing as a last name and a first name, because it all works differently. So, yes, it's a real sort of interesting, interesting thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:42

Yeah, are we going to get letters on a postcard? What is your middle name?

James Cridland: 1:22:46

Oh, I think that's. I think that's a conversation for me and the tax man Right.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:51

That's about as far as it'll go, and a coffee shop in New York? Okay, yes, quite possibly. So what else has happened for you this week?

James Cridland: 1:23:01

James, really. I mean, you've heard all the exciting news about the Roadcaster. You've heard all the exciting news about oh. In fact, I haven't mentioned the Roadcaster in the show, have I? So I suppose I'd better go back and say, well, so I've been playing around with the oh. No, what did I? I think you did.

John Spurlock: 1:23:21

Yeah, I think.

James Cridland: 1:23:21

I did. Okay, yes, so you've heard about the roadcaster, you've, you've, you've. You've heard about video as well, recording things on video. So no, I think you know it's. It's it's a nice quiet week. Quiet week Next week, off to Jakarta in Indonesia. So we need to work out when we're going to record this very show, but I'm sure that we will find a time to do that, and then the week after or a couple of weeks after that, then I'm due in London and then in Calgary. So it's all going to go on. So that's going to be fun. But yes, I'm just enjoying a nice quiet week. Really. I did enjoy speaking for the. There is a health podcast coming up which I ended up doing a little thing for that the other day, so that was fun to do. But yeah, it's all going on basically, and that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News Daily newsletter at podnewsnet.

Sam Sethi: 1:24:18

You can support this show by streaming sats. You can give us feedback by using the Buzzsprout fan mail link in our show notes, or you can send us a super comment or boost. Better still, become a power supporter like the 21 people at weeklypodnewsnet.

James Cridland: 1:24:33

You should have seen Tom Rossi when I said, oh, I've got a fan mail, and he was yes, yes, you've got a fan mail. Our music is from TM Studios. I'm sitting down with our composer next week, so, yes, we're having beers together, so that should be fun. Our voiceover is Sheila Dee and a little bit of Wondercraft. Our audio is recorded using Clean Feed, we edit with Hindenburg and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Speaker 1: 1:25:01

Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

John Spurlock: 1:25:07

Tell your friends and grow the show and support us, and support us. The Pod News Weekly.

Speaker 1: 1:25:12

Review will return next week. Keep listening.